


Pavel and the Ghost Cat

by LucyWildheart



Category: Original Work
Genre: #urbanlegends, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 21:44:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12993141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucyWildheart/pseuds/LucyWildheart
Summary: I decided to write a new story based on the legend about "The Ghost Cat From Tverskaya Street". This is a story about a young man whose name was Pavel.





	Pavel and the Ghost Cat

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to Oliver who corrected my mistakes in this text. ;)

Pavel was a museum's security guard, but ever since his childhood he had been dreaming about becoming a famous writer.  
Young man had had a rich imagination and he mostly was working in night’s hours. So... sometimes he saw quite strange things, but when he decided to talk about it to his colleagues, they laughed at him, and said that this is only his imagination. 

But one of the older night guards, who had been working in this museum for about a hundred years, told him the story, which was, as he claimed "the pure truth". It was a legend circulating around the museum's employees for several decades.

They say that people had been talking about some strange things happening in the Tverskaysa Street around midnight. Local folk and guests to the city, as well as janitors and street-workers saw the ghost of a giant black cat when they were wandering through the street at night. All these strange things happened in between the underground stations "Pushkinskaya" and "Mayakowskaya".

Many people who saw the cat, when they were walking along Tverskaya street, say: “He isn’t evil. He can even bring you some good fortune, if you are lucky enough to meet him.” 

The old man continued: “But avoid standing in his way, if he passes through you, most likely, you will lose consciousness.”  
“Also”, he said after a short pause. – "The museum's employees claim, that the black cat became the prototype of the Cat-Behemoth in "Master and Margarita". They say that Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov was once walking through the street in Moscow and came across the black cat, so that's how one of the characters of his famous work was born, and Mikhail Bulgakov became a famous writer.”

When Pavel wasn’t on his duty, he had been spending hours and hours trying to write things: short stories, fairy tales, he had even started to write a novel, but he got stuck in the middle of it…

Many times he sent his works to publishing offices, but no one wanted to print and release them.  
Pavel had started to lose his hope and confidence in himself, but one day, as he was sitting at his table and staring blankly at the white page of his future ‘famous novel’ he remembered the legend of the ghost cat. "What if I meet the black cat from Tverskaya and it helps me to become a successful writer just like Bulgakov?!" He thought.

And he decided to try his luck and went to look for the ghost cat. He had been looking for The Cat for about a month and half. The old guard informed him, that the cat appears only on the odd dates of the month and on the odd side of the street. So he tried to go out every night on the odd dates.

One day, on 13th of September, he was walking along the odd side of Tverskaya Street, it was a cold and rainy night, so sometimes he visited the pubs to take some drinks trying to keep his body warm. So… by the end of his ‘watching’ he wasn’t particularly sober. Stumbling a little, in result of tiredness of course, Pavel was walking home, when suddenly he saw the big black cat jumping out of the wall of the building right in front of him.

He wanted to catch the cat, but the mystic animal was running very quickly, so he couldn’t reach him. Pavel gathered all his power and ran after the cat; eventually he came closer and managed to catch him.

The cat appeared to be a ghost, but released an unusually loud and scary scream. It got furious and scratched Pavel's face. Most likely the cat even passed through Pavel, because the last thing he remembered was the rat running along the street, passing a few buildings, then running across the street and disappearing into the wall of a building.

How did he get home? Pavel did not remember.  
When he woke up in his bed he even thought it was only a dream, but when he saw himself in the mirror, he noticed four big long scratches – traces of the cat’s claws. So… He understood, that he had met the ghost cat, or perhaps, the cat was real.  
After that Pavel had been thinking about the night’s incident for about a week, when he eventually came to the conclusion to put an end to all this silliness!  
He decided that he didn't need any lucky cat to help him; he just had to work hard and believe in himself. He decided that he had to be more determined. Next week he quit his job for good, and decided to sort out all his drafts. He reread all his works very carefully and burned some of them. Then he started to rewrite those which were worth it. 

Where is Pavel now?! – You may ask me.

He might have become a very successful writer and went to Hollywood to write screenplays for films and now is sitting on a balcony of his mansion and drinking cold ‘margarita’ from a high glass, or maybe he is still sitting in his cold room and writing his novel, which is supposed to become the next "Master and Margarita".

\- No one knows exactly…


End file.
